305_Ciaran Magee: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Ciaran Magee from Belfast, Northern Ireland: “I am a recent graduate from the Queens University Belfast MArch program, having completed my studies in 2018. My interests in architecture lie in small interventions that express strong ideas. I have a great respect for the situationist movement, and a keen interest in the expression of détournement in an architectural context.
My time at QUB involved material experimentation, research into the chronicling of modernism in cinema, experimentation with design through making, and the relationship between garden and architecture through the hortus conclusus.”
Website: http://ciaranmagee.com
University: Queens University Belfast
Professor(s): Michael McGarry
Name of Project: An Ambiguous Heterotopia: A plant nursery for Helen's Bay, NI
Project Description: Writers have been described as being either architects or gardeners. That is to say, one who cultivates a story or one who structures it. This thesis investigates the space between this dichotomous metaphor, researching the context of the garden as a spatial and architectural intervention.
This research is synthesized into a proposal for a plant nursery and garden on the site of a Victorian walled garden in Helen’s Bay, Northern Ireland. Taking cues from the typology of the Irish folly tower, and the architecture and garden work of Edwin Lutyens, Gertrude Jekyll, and Piet Oudolf; the building emerges from a garden of cultivated wilderness, rising above the tree line to facilitate a panoramic vista of the Northern Irish landscape.
Instagram Username: @cianmagee__
